Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky was born in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk),
Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), the daughter
of Col. Peter Alexeivich von Hahn and Elena Fadeev. Her mother, also known as Helena Andreyvna Fadeyev, was a novelist, known as the
"Russian George Sand", and died when Helena was eleven. Her father being in the armed
forces, she was sent with her brother to live with her maternal grandmother,
Helena Pavlovna de Fadeev,
a princess of the Dolgorukov family and a famous
botanist. Both her mother and grandmother were strong role models that allowed
her to mature into a nonconformist.

She was cared
for by servants who believed in the many superstitions of Old Russia, and apparently encouraged her to believe she
had supernatural powers at a very early age.

She married
when she was seventeen, on July 7, 1849, to the forty-year old Nikifor
(also Nicephor) Vassilievitch
Blavatsky. According to her account, they never consummated their marriage, and
within a few months, she abandoned her

husband.

According to
her own story as told to a later biographer, she spent the years 1848 to 1858
traveling the world, claiming to have entered Tibet to study with the Ascended Masters for two
years.

She returned
to Russia for a short stay in 1858 to soon leave with
Italian opera

singerAgardiMetrovich. In 1871, on a boat bound for Cairo an explosion
claimed Agardi’s life, but H.P. Blavatsky continued
on to Cairo herself. It was in Cairo that she formed the SocieteSpirite for occult phenomena. This Society lasted
only a few months.

It was in
1873 that she emigrated to New York City. Impressing people with her apparent psychic
abilities she was spurred on to continue her mediumship.

Throughout her
career she claimed to be able to perform physical and mental psychic feats
which included levitation, clairvoyance, out-of-body projection, telepathy, and
clairaudience. One new feat of hers was materialization, that is,

producing
physical objects out of nothing. Though she was apparently quite adept at these
feats, her interests were more in the area of theory and laws of how they work
rather than performing them herself.

In 1874, Helena met Henry Steel Olcott; he was a lawyer,
agricultural expert, and journalist who covered the Spiritualist phenomena.
Soon they were living together in the "Lamasery" (alternate spelling:
"Lamastery") where her work Isis

Unveiled was
created.

While living
in New York
City, she founded
the Theosophical Society on November 17th 1875, with Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge and
others.

The Society
took its inspiration from Brahminical Hinduism and
Esoteric Buddhism. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true,
in their inner teachings, and false or imperfect, in their external
conventional manifestations. Imperfect men attempting to translate the divine
knowledge had corrupted it in the translation. Her claim that esoteric
spiritual knowledge is consistent with new science may be considered to be the first
instance of what is now called New Age thinking. In fact, many researchers feel
that much of New Age thought started with Blavatsky.

By 1882 the
Theosophical Society became an international organization, and it was at this
time that she moved the headquarters to Adyar near Madras, India.

Suffering
from heart disease, rheumatism, Bright's disease of
the kidneys, and complications from influenza, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
died at her home May 8, 1891. Her body was cremated.